The superconscious (also super-conscious or super conscious) is a proposed aspect of

mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...

to accompany the

conscious Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

and

subconscious In psychology, the subconscious is the part of the mind that is not currently of focal awareness. Scholarly use of the term The word ''subconscious'' represents an anglicized version of the French ''subconscient'' as coined in 1889 by the psycho ...

and/or

unconscious Unconscious may refer to: Physiology * Unconsciousness, the lack of consciousness or responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuli Psychology * Unconscious mind, the mind operating well outside the attention of the conscious mind a ...

. It is able to acquire knowledge through non-physical or

psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, ...

mechanisms and pass that knowledge to the conscious mind.Atkinson, William Walker. (1909). ''Subconscious and Superconscious; Planes of Mind'', Progress, Chicago, 1909.Lyttelton, Edith (1931). ''Our Superconscious Mind'', Philip Allan, 1931. It therefore transcends ordinary consciousness. The term is also used to describe transcendental states of consciousness achieved through

meditation Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally cal ...

and related practices, thus accessing the superconscious mind directly. Knowledge acquired by the superconscious need not be from the present or nearby, it may be from the past or future, from a physically remote present, or of beings undetectable by the physical senses. Superconsciousness is therefore offered in order to provide an explanation for psychic phenomena such as

precognition Precognition (from the Latin 'before', and 'acquiring knowledge') is the purported psychic phenomenon of seeing, or otherwise becoming directly aware of, events in the future. There is no accepted scientific evidence that precognition is a ...

, remote vision and seances. Mainstream science does not recognise such

phenomena as genuine, and therefore regards theories to account for them as

pseudoscience Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or falsifiability, unfa ...

History

An early exponent of the superconscious was

William Walker Atkinson William Walker Atkinson (December 5, 1862 – November 22, 1932) was an attorney, merchant, publisher, and author, as well as an occultist and an American pioneer of the New Thought movement. He is the author of the pseudonymous works attribut ...

, an American

occultist The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism an ...

and prolific author of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The idea was expanded on by British novelist, playwright, World War I-era activist and

spiritualist Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century The ''long nineteenth century'' i ...

Edith Lyttelton Dame Edith Sophy Lyttelton (''née'' Balfour; 4 April 1865 – 2 September 1948) was a British novelist, playwright, World War I-era activist and spiritualist. Biography Lyttelton was born in Saint Petersburg, the eldest daughter of A ...

. Popov et al have recently suggest that the superconscious is the source of creative and intuitive thought as well as spirituality, and that it arises from holistic brain activity, processing in the order of 10²⁹³ times more information than the conscious mind.L.E. Popov, S.N. Postnikov, S.N. Kolupaeva, and M.I. Slobodskoi. (2015).
The Phenomena of Superconsciousness, Consciousness and Subconsciousness
. Chapter V in V.L. Popov (editor), ''Natural Resources and Technologies in Educational Activities: Education in Times of Accelerated Technological Development'', CISP, 2015.

References

Consciousness Parapsychology Pseudoscience {{para-psych-stub

History

See also

References